1969 was a year of sea change for me. I left home. I found a community of people with similar values. And I read Meditations by Descartes and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn. That began a life-long attempt to comprehend what it meant to pursue the truth and to accept that I lived in a culture in history. I can’t not do either of those inquiries. This post is in response to a book I am reading right now: Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul by John Barry. So far it is a history of the duels between Edward Coke and Francis Bacon and between Catholicism and Protestantism. The immediate outcome was the flight of the Puritans to the New World. They failed spectacularly to comprehend the impact of living in history on truth.
Living a delusion
I can’t say I know much about Puritanism and I don’t find myself very strongly inclined to learn more. I am no more likely to study Puritanism than I am likely to study Nietzsche, Bull Connor, or Goebbels. The illusions, the stupidity, and the evilness are visible on the surface. I doubt that I will find anything of value should I choose to delve within.
Even so, I am curious about Puritanism because they are a case study of the theory that a person can’t have just one bat-shit crazy (BSC) idea. A person needs to have a whole slew of BSC ideas to support any one of those preposterous delusions. (I choose the word “delusion” over “illusion” because delusions are usually self-inflicted. All of us periodically fall victim to illusions.) . One of the BSC ideas that prompted the Puritans to flee England was that God was leaving England. They had rejected the Catholic Church partly because they correctly identified how deeply it had become theater. The costumes priests wore. The ceremonies. The adoration of wealth. The smells and bells. Now they discovered that the Church of England was reclaiming its roots in the Catholic Church. Puritans began telling each other that God was sick of England and that He was leaving. They had constructed for themselves a delusion that God had a localized presence that allowed Him to move somehow from place to place, one of the supporting BSC ideas. The stories they told each other posited a god who liked some things, felt one way or another, held values, and did specific things. More BSC ideas.
So here’s my puzzle: What BSC ideas do I hold? Like the Puritans, I live in a culture that creates for me big and little stories to guide my decisions and actions. I live in history too. Believe it or not, I share a great deal of DNA with them. How can I escape the same behaviors? Or can I?